Baldry, Bond and Black Magic

Graham John Clifton Bond (28 October 1937 – 8 May 1974) was an orphan, adopted from the Dr Barnardo’s home, who came to prominence in 1962 at the Marquee Club in London as a featured musician with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated. In 1963 Bond formed a trio, then a quartet, before founding in 1964 the Graham Bond Organisation. It was during the following period that he took an unusual interest in the occult and the works of Crowley. He was not alone in that respect. David Bowie and Mick Jagger each became fascinated with the diabolist’s writings, and the singer Sting apparently used to read Crowley’s books when touring. Yet Bond went much further and became a practicing Thelemite. From that moment his fate appears to have been sealed. He renamed his band the Graham Bond Initiation; its final appellation being Holy Magick (adopting Crowley’s perverse spelling of the word “magic”). In the early days, Bond was noted as being a silent, humble figure with a plastic alto saxophone; always on the outskirts of what was going on, never part of it. The thing about him was that he was not noticed. This would change. The versatile keyboard player and saxophonist, who also did some vocals, steadily developed an obsession with the occult, especially the brand of Satanism, devised by Crowley and known as Thelema, imitated by Pope and Farrant. Like his mentor, he also became seriously addicted to drugs and alcohol. According to the posthumous biography The Mighty Shadow, written by Harry Shapiro, Graham Bond sexually abused his stepdaughter. Pope would claim to be Crowley’s “spiritual successor” - employing the title “Son of the Beast” - but Graham Bond went one better. He claimed to be an illegitimate son of Aleister Crowley. In the Left-hand Path world of the dark occult nothing is too sacred or taboo for exponents of Thelema.

 

On 8 May 1974, Graham Bond fell, or perhaps jumped, in front of the wheels of a London Underground train at Finsbury Park station, and died instantly. In the previous year, he had been called upon by another rock star, “Long” John Baldry of Muswell Hill, London, to help in an “exorcism,” as the media insisted on describing it. Baldry had been receiving threats and curses from Farrant, who confirmed this to be the case in repeated boasts published in his local newspapers at the time, eg the front page headline story of the Hornsey Journal, 28 September 1973. Baldry believed that his missing cat Stupzi had been sacrificed by Farrant in a witchcraft ritual. Whilst not denying the ritual sacrifice of cats during this period, Farrant maintained that the one he killed in Highgate Wood was not Stupzi, but a stray. On one occasion, Baldry and Bond arrived at Farrant's bed-sitting room to confront the sender of black magic threats, but only found Pope whom Farrant had been using to deliver clay effigies with accompanying menacing poems (as confirmed by Pope in later interviews). Farrant himself was out at the time, or possibly in hiding. When the rock star met with his unfortunate death, Pope immediately claimed that he had killed Graham Bond with a black magic curse; something he reiterated in subsequent interviews.

Mystery has always surrounded the untimely demise of Graham Bond and many commentators in the media have looked for simple answers, sometimes erroneously describing Bond as a “white magician.” There is nothing “white” about the magic that springs from Aleister Crowley. I spoke to Baldry in person, following a live television programme we both appeared on concerning the dangers of the occult, to assure him that Farrant was bogus and Pope was a sick joke. He nevertheless grew ever more terrified of the curses he had received and quit England for Canada, never to return. Farrant issued witchcraft threats to all manner of people throughout 1973, culminating in his investigation by Scotland Yard detectives. They discovered an altar with black candles beneath an image of the Devil in his bed-sitting room. He was arrested in early 1974 and held on remand until his trials in June, resulting in a four years and eight months prison sentence. Pope remained free to pursue his undisguised brand of diabolsim. Bond died a month before Farrant faced his own fate in front of a judge and jury.

John Pope intended to “form a new coven that will rule the world” and “abolish the system whereby children are forced to learn Christian worship,” according to an interview he gave Reveille magazine, 21 November 1975. When this failed to happen, he became increasingly unstable, declaring direct blood descent from Jesus Christ, Dracula, Robin Hood and Jack the Ripper. Farrant would frequently refer to Pope behind his back as a “silly little imbecile.” John Pope would later provide “horror tours” to paying voyeurs who want to see the haunts "Jack the Ripper" in London’s East End where Pope now resides, and the house of the sexual pervert and serial murderer Dennis Nielson, which is located just around the corner from the Muswell Hill attic bed-sitting room occupied by Farrant since his release from prison on parole in 1976.